Luc Besson, director of such classics as (La Femme) Nikita, (Léon) The Professional, The Fifth Element, and more recently Lucy, has announced what his next project would be. The director has not been active on social media in the past and he aims to change that effective today. Thus, his unexpected Facebook posts in French and English are about his next big project, a return to science-fiction. Not just any science-fiction though, but the old-school French graphic novel sci-fi of his childhood and mine: Valerian, Time-Space Agent.

My first tweet ever! Let’s share a real news! My next film is a big sci-fi: #Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

— Luc Besson (@lucbesson) May 12, 2015

The movie will be entitled Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which is bit odd because the original graphic novel is called Valerian and the Empire of a Thousand Planets (George Lucas has a copy on his bookshelf, and Darth Vader bears a striking resemblance to a character in the book).

Monsieur Besson has already decided on who will play Valerian and Laureline, the two plucky space-time agents. Dane DeHaan, most recently seen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 as Harry Osborn, will play Valerian. Laureline will be portrayed by Cara Delevingne – she stars as Enchantress in the upcoming Suicide Squad film.

Personally, I am really excited about this news. The Valerian books were a big part of my childhood and The Fifth Element had captured some of that magic. This is not too surprising since half of the creative team behind Valerian, Jean-Claude Mézières, served as conceptual consultant on that film, along with dearly departed art god Jean “Moebius” Giraud.

Luc Besson’s original Facebook post in its charming Frenglish is included here:

“Hello everyone – As you probably noticed I’m not really the king of social media, it’s, in fact, my first day on it. Why suddenly? Because I’m starting today the biggest challenge of my career and I don’t want to be alone. I want to share. It’s a huge sci-fi film called Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It’s based from a comic book, maybe the most famous one in Europe. I’m a big fan of it since I’m 12 years old. Valerian and Laureline are two agents traveling through space and time. They will be played by Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne. I have around 800 days of work ahead of me, plenty of time to be discouraged or feel lonely, so I’m counting on your support. I will try to share my adventure with you as much as I can. So… I go back to work, talk to you soon. Luc”

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This randomly generated sci-fi story was created by Krypton Radio from a flowchart presented in a short article called "The Science Fiction Horror Movie Pocket Computer" by cartoonist Gahan Wilson, originally published in National Lampoon in 1971. Each time you visit this site, you get a new story.